


in waiting

by thatbroadcast



Series: WIP Amnesty 2k14 [1]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2748134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatbroadcast/pseuds/thatbroadcast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What, three months in the chokey and you’ve taken up smoking?” Jakes points two fingers at Morse, his own cigarette caught between them, and grins. “For shame. Wasn’t there anything better to do? Distilling your own gin in a toilet. Knife fighting in the yards, maybe.”</p><p> </p><p>Post-Neverland, Jakes picks Morse up from prison. It is extremely awkward.</p><p>(WIP Amnesty.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mdashes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdashes/gifts).



> This is part of my years-end WIP Amnesty and will probably never be finished, but hey, there is a severe lack of Endeavour fic in the world. This probably would've gone to a Monica/Jakes/Morse ot3 kind of place because that's how I roll.
> 
> Ps. It's probably really glaringly obvious how much I don't know about the English penal system and I apologize for that.

Jakes collects Morse from prison not because he wants to, but because there hadn’t really been any other choice. 

It had been no contest, in fact - Thursday still in hospital, too weak to do much else but lift a cup of tea to his lips, Bright unable or perhaps unwilling to play favorites, Strange too embarrassed. He’d been reluctant enough himself, unsure of his welcome, of just what kind of sympathy he might find in Morse.

He stands outside in the watery mid-afternoon light, counting the bricks on the face of the building and smoking cigarette after cigarette. It’s nearing two in the afternoon by now. Jakes has been waiting since half-ten. Morse is probably running late on purpose, just to be contrary.

Jakes feels itchy with waiting, still a bit dull and headachey from last night’s drink. He props himself against the driver’s door car and waits, grinding the butts of his cigarettes down into the pavement with the toe of his shoe.

Morse does eventually appear out the front doors, dressed in the same old weathered car coat, hands shoved into his rumpled trouser pockets. His hair is longer than usual, unbrushed, and he has a rough spot of obvious stubble on his chin where he’s missed it shaving. He picks his way down the steps and then stops, blinking up into the sun.

Jakes waits for Morse to stop glaring up at the sky like it has personally offended him and acknowledge how patiently Jakes has been waiting. He clears his throat pointedly when Morse just stands there, squinting like an idiot.

Morse's head snaps around. No matter how long Jakes has known Morse, he is always slightly unprepared for the sharpness of his gaze, even diluted as it is beneath layers of exhaustion and stress.

“Came to pick you up,” Jakes offers, unnecessarily. He puts his hands on his hips and refuses to feel embarrassed about this, the latest in his recent stretch of kindnesses towards Morse. “I called, thought they might have let you know I was waiting.”

This should be a triumphant moment. Jakes knows that Morse has been informed of the arrests - Wintergreen, Deare, Chard, all put away without bail, on testimony from Thursday and quite a load of incriminating documentation found and verified by Jakes. But he doesn’t smile, or say thank you. 

What he says is, “Can I see him?”

“Yeah,” says Jakes, already moving towards the driver’s seat, “Yeah, of course.”

Morse stands there for so long, staring at Jakes sitting in the car, that eventually he has to crane his head out the passenger seat window and call, "Coming, then?"

Morse startles badly but gets in the car nonchalantly, like this is nothing more than a weekday jaunt to the countryside. Jakes resists saying any of this out loud, but Morse gives him a look, like he knows exactly what Jakes is thinking.

Well, then. He’s no stranger to avoidance. It's not his place to judge.

He tries out a smile in Morse's general direction, though it sits uncomfortably on his face. 

Morse looks at him like he's gone utterly insane, and Jakes shrugs back. It was worth a shot.

 

  
Thursday is sitting up in bed when they arrive. He looks terribly put out, but better than he has done over the past few weeks. He sees Jakes first, poking his head into the hospital room, and shakes a half-finished crossword puzzle at him.

"I need a five letter word for 'song for nine voices', Sergeant," he says, frowning. "The nurses are all claiming ignorance. It's a disgrace."

"‘Nonet’," says Morse, squeezing in behind Jakes and looking a little pleased, a bit less worn down.

Jakes wonders if Morse had thought he'd been lied to, about Thursday being well recovered, but dismisses the thought almost immediately. Morse was the type of person that needed to see things for himself, needed to touch and turn over and examine. And here was Thursday, upright with color in his cheeks, navy pen ink all over the outside of his right hand.

"Morse," says Thursday, so warmly that Jakes feels suddenly as though he is intruding.

"Tea," he mutters to himself, and turns away down the hallway, hearing Morse's soft relieved exhale of, "Sir," as he goes.

 

The cafeteria is in the bowels of the hospital, bland and outdated like every other hospital cafeteria in the world. Scratched and chipped laminate countertops, the tables with their wobbly and scratched chairs, and the overwhelmingly antiseptic scent of lemon polish. It is, in its own way, comforting. 

Jakes has spent the last two months unable to get much work done at the station - and what work it was, springing Morse. Harder even than burying his own shame at the part he’d failed to play in this whole mess.

There were too many unknown variables at the station: Bright’s near-fatherly shoulder claps of commiseration. The feeling that there were eyes where no eyes had rights to be. The suspicion that one or more of their very own might have been responsible for the frame-up. 

He’d smoked nearly three packs a day that first week, chair turned away at just the right angle to avoid seeing Morse’s desk, cleared of all its miscellany, bare of the neatly-ordered papers and the ever-present crossword puzzle.

Finally, Bright had cornered him on the way to the gent’s, clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders like a man going to his own death. And knowing Bright, his generational stiff upper lip, Jakes thought this might actually be the case.

“Now, look here, Sergeant,” Bright had said, squinting up at him, “Let it never be said that I play favorites, but until -” here he’d leaned in, whispering, “- until we come to a solution as to how to help Detective Constable Morse, I think it would greatly benefit all of us if you were not seen about the station with all of that.”

 

He’d nodded at Jakes’ armful of hard-won folder files and papers, full of information on Deare and Wintergreen. The papers on Chard, at least, he kept at home, taped to the inside of his small chimney. The amount of favors he’d called in to get that information had nearly wiped him clean and the threats he’d given had been reprehensible, though oddly satisfactory. And now. It was humiliating, really.

If Jakes had been thinking clearly, instead of through the haze of an ever-present hangover, he might have come to the same conclusion himself. Anyone so bold as to frame someone like Morse, who had an excellent solve rate despite a widely-recognized attitude problem, would not balk at aiming further up the food chain.

“Shit,” Jakes had said, and though Bright’s eyes had narrowed, he hadn’t said a word. “I mean. Understood, sir.”

And so the hospital had become his base of operations. He’d already been there as often as he could manage, ducking Joanie in the visitors lounge and keeping Thursday updated on his progress. Now he’d visit Thursday twice a day on weekdays, and spend the rest of his time under flickering lightbulbs, papers spread all around the table in the corner that he’d claimed as his own.

Today his work is finally finished. He could go to the station, or maybe get a drink down the pub.

Instead he gets a little cup of weak, charred coffee, and that’s where Monica finds him, hunched over and staring at the oily dark surface, steam rising weakly into the air.

She manages to get the jump on him, even, clearing her throat and raising her eyebrows when he jumps and swears, staring up at her with wide eyes.

"You're a terrible woman," Jakes tells her, pointing an accusing finger. "Truly."

"I saw Morse."

She sits primly across from him, linking her legs together at the ankle. The look on her face is so pointed that Jakes can barely speak. He feels like an unruly child, being given a good talking-to by Mother, never mind that she’d barely said two words yet.

"Right," he says, sipping more burnt coffee, "I was going to tell you. At some point."

"No, I don't know that you were,” she says, tilting her head to the side. She looks lovely but exhausted, wrung dry.

"I was! Only you've seen him already, so I suppose the burden has been lifted. Was it very touching?"

Monica adjusts her white cap with one decisive jerk. Her eyes refuse to meet his. It hadn’t gone well, then.

"I came to check in on Fred, see if he wanted another book to read, or maybe some new puzzles, and Morse was there. He looked at me like -" Monica's mouth purses up in a frown. "Well, he didn't even acknowledge that we knew one another, really. He called me Nurse."

Jakes winces, drawing one hand down the side of his face in a gesture he's always seen older, more world-weary men do. It feels suddenly appropriate.

"I picked him up," he finally admits, looking at his own hands laced around a chipped mug on top of olive green laminate, "He seemed a bit dazed."

"I'd imagine so," she says, with the same sort of calm that had originally drawn Jakes to her.

(She'd shown up at the station three days after Morse's initial arrest, spitting mad, poking her slender little index finger into the chest of any policeman unfortunate enough to cross paths with her. Her nails were bare of paint, but wickedly long. By the time she’d gotten to Jakes, it was all he could do avoid preemptively flinching away.

"Where is he? Where is Morse? Fred Thursday is in my hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach. If you don’t tell me where Morse is, I’ll go to the captain. Just try to stop me."

She'd said all of it quite calmly, but her hands, when she wasn’t stabbing at people with them, had been shaking.

So then, she was the source of Morse's mysterious scarf, his softer demeanour, his new and bizarre habit of going home at a reasonable hour - work permitting.

It had been one of the worst conversations of his entire life. Having to admit that Morse was locked away, beyond all hope, and that the reason that no one had thought to tell her was because no one had known about her.

He'd watched her deflate, gone from anger to acceptance in a few short moments. She was beautiful, self-contained and elegant in a radiant sort of way that became increasingly obvious the more she sunk in on herself. Her brightness, her shining beacon of loveliness, must have been what had drawn Morse to her in the first place.

So they'd sat there in his office with the blinds drawn, Jakes with a cigarette and her with the strap of her handbag wound tightly around her fist, staring at one another. Eventually the quiet and stillness became unbearable, cloyed with smoke and the weight of Monica’s silence, but before Jakes could come up with anything to say, she'd beaten him to it.

"What do you plan to do?" she'd said. It wasn’t until she’d spoken again that Jakes realized that the quiet he had taken for hopelessness was fury.

He didn’t speak for so long that she'd huffed and repeated herself, like he was an idiot, "What do you plan to do, Sergeant?"

"I don't know," he'd said, helplessly, "I don't know."

Monica had stared at him, made sure he was meeting her eyes. There was anger there, and sadness too, but mainly there was love for Morse. Quite a lot of love, really, and it was startling to realize that someone like Morse - so offish and strange - could inspire such a depth of emotion in someone else.

"Well," she'd finally said, with a small smile that hadn’t touched her eyes, "You'd best figure it out soon.")

“What should I do?” Jakes asks her, lighting up a cigarette just to give her something to disapprove of. She hums in amusement, eyes flicking from the cherry to his face.

“What should you do?” Monica says, wryly. “Go home, Peter. Get some rest. I hadn’t wanted to mention it before, but you look awful.”

Jakes thinks about it for a moment, his lonely little bedsit with empty whiskey bottles crowding the side tables, full of cigarette filters. He shakes his head. “No, no. I ought to drop Morse off.”

“Well, then.” Monica twists her small hands together, and smiles at him only slightly off-kilter. “You can buy me dinner. I’m on my break, you know, and I’m starving.”

Glad for the respite, for something to do, for Monica hiding her grief in the face of his own exhaustion, Jakes springs to his feet. “Done. You stay right there, Miss Hicks, and I’ll bring you the finest pudding a man can buy.”

 

Dinner with Monica does wonders for his mood, though he spends most of it grasping for a comforting word. Incapable, he puts a hand over hers and squeezes, catching her surprised and grateful glance and looking away.

He feels ashamed for Morse, who is somehow capable of looking at Monica without apologizing, and says so, mumbling into his cherry jelly.

“He’s got nothing to apologize for,” she says eventually, shrugging, though Jakes can tell she doesn’t believe it. She adjusts her hat one last time and stands, smiling. “Thank you for dinner, Peter, it was wonderful. I’ve got to get back. I’ll see you soon.”

“Goodbye,” says Jakes, a few moments too late. Monica is already pushing open the swinging double doors, back straight and smart heels clicking on the linoleum. She doesn’t hear him.

 

Jakes lingers outside of Thursday’s room for an interminable half an hour, wavering. He’s caught between entering and possibly interrupting some sort of emotional reunion, or heading back downstairs for yet another vile cup of coffee, when Thursday says, quite loudly, “Just come in already, Sergeant.”

He does, and is quite surprised to find Morse asleep, sat in a chair and draped over the hospital bed, face in the linens. Morse always gives the impression of stillness, an air of quiet reserve, but Jakes has never seen him so motionless, so lifeless. He exchanges a helpless glance with Thursday. “Sir?”

“Well, if my shouting at you didn’t wake him, I don’t know what will,” Thursday says, amused. “I think he needs the rest. He looks terrible.”

“Maybe, sir,” says Jakes, “But visiting hours are almost over. I should take him home.”

Thursday nods, frowning. “Best get some sleep yourself, Jakes. You look like a stiff wind could blow you over.”

“Sir,” says Jakes, agreeably, and then grabs Morse by the shoulders and shakes him.

Morse is up and on his feet inside of a second, gasping, hands raised defensively in front of his face. Jakes feels immediately terrible, not least because Thursday’s mouth is hanging open too. Morse’s chest is heaving, and though he lowers his arms the moment he remembers where he is, his eyes are still wild.

“Sorry,” says Jakes, quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Morse doesn’t say anything at all to him, just pushes his hair back off of his face and offers a hand to Thursday. “I’m glad to see you well, sir.”

Thursday takes his hand and shakes it, eyes warmly concerned. “You too, Morse. You too.”

 

Another surprise: Morse smokes, now. Jakes laughs in his face the first time he sees it, that first night of Morse’s freedom. They’ve dropped the car off at the station and it’s unseasonably cold, but only a short walk to Morse’s flat. Jakes follows him without explanation or much thought and they walk abreast, silently.

Morse has said barely three words to him all day. He gives the impression of having heard every word that Jakes has said, but won’t deign to respond, not that Jakes is particularly surprised.

Morse barely tolerates him on the best of days and this day particularly, though it may have begun with Morse’s freedom, is free of happy reunions, of celebratory champagne or even a hug for Morse, who probably wouldn’t permit any of that anyway. He’s not sure why he’s even trying, chattering away at this spectre, tag-a-long Pete.

Jakes is still searching for something to say and coming up grasping, so instead he turns to look at Morse and is so startled he starts to laugh.

Morse is holding a cigarette between his lips, hands curled around the flickering match and cheeks drawn in to light it. It's a half-practiced gesture, stretched somewhere between surety and utter absurdity. Morse coughs a bit on the second inhale, grimacing, smoke pouring out his mouth. Jakes declines to mention it.

“What, three months in the chokey and you’ve taken up smoking?” Jakes points two fingers at Morse, his own cigarette caught between them, and grins. “For shame. Wasn’t there anything better to do? Distilling your own gin in a toilet. Knife fighting in the yards, maybe.”

Morse glares at him. Jakes looks down at his own feet again, crunching through molding leaves, but he can feel Morse staring at him, can practically see his lip curling. There’s one thing that hasn’t changed, at least. Morse still struggles to contain himself, bristling like an angry cat and so very unconcerned that anyone might notice.

"Not much room for socialization," Jakes concedes, not without sympathy. A policeman in jail, that's never anything that ends well. Morse would have been ostracised at best, beaten or murdered at worst, if they’d left him much longer. "Understandably."

Morse doesn't respond at all, though when Jakes risks a glance up his face has softened some. He's staring up at the window of his own flat with something approaching wonder, hands stuffed in his coat pockets.

Jakes can see the traces of his breath in the chill air, long slow breaths through the nose and out the mouth, the rhythm of a man at rest - the way Jakes supposes one might inhale the scent of a lover's perfume, or rest at the end of a very long day, at home in bed with the phone off the hook.

Jakes feels uncomfortable, standing there staring at Morse communing with his own home, like catching a glimpse of kissing lovers through an uncovered window at night.

"Well, glad to have you back, I suppose," he says, finally, and claps Morse on the shoulder before retreating.

Morse doesn't thank him, but then Jakes had never expected him to.


End file.
